Everything You Need To Know About Ebola and Our Troops

Everything you need to know about Ebola and our troops should be easy to find, but finding an article that explained the disease, what it means to me as a US citizen, and what it means for our troops deploying to fight this epidemic in one place was hard to come by. So, after seeing so many concerns posted all over Facebook. Twitter and other social media sites it became important to me to do my own research concerning Ebola and its threat to our troops deploying to Liberia, Africa.

Here are some of my questions and their answers.

Will our troops be Safe during Operation United Assistance aka “The Fight Against Ebola?”

The Fort Campbell Courier recently published the following photos by Yvette Smith showing our troops and their preparation for the mission.

Photo by: Yvette SmithJeff Beck, U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, helps a Soldier don his personal protective equipment at the Donning Level II Station as part of the Force Health Protection

Will we be safe? Can we get Ebola in the US? How do you know if you have it? How long does the Ebola virus live on surfaces?

How does it spread, and how do you kill it?

EBOLA ON SURFACES

Ebola virus is killed with hospital-grade disinfectants (such as household bleach). Ebola virus on dried surfaces, such as doorknobs and countertops, can survive for several hours; however, virus in body fluids (such as blood) can survive up to several days at room temperature.

Use a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered hospital disinfectant with a label claim for a non-enveloped virus (e.g., norovirus, rotavirus, adenovirus, poliovirus) to disinfect environmental surfaces in room of patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola virus infection. Find out what other household items kill Ebola.

Yes. Airline travelers in the United States are extremely unlikely to be infected with Ebola virus. CDC believes that there
is minimal risk to passengers on the same plane as the infected healthcare worker. However, as a precaution, CDC is
working with the airline to contact passengers who traveled on two flights the healthcare worker was on.
• Ebola can be spread by an infected person only when that individual is sick with fever and other symptoms.
• Ebola is not as infectious as the flu or the common cold.
• How easily the infection is spread from one person to another is directly related to the level of virus in the body.
o On day one of illness when a person develops a fever, the level of virus in the body is low, but not zero.
o As a person gets more sick with Ebola and the symptoms become more intense, the virus level increases
in the body and fluids from the person’s body become more infectious.